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20th Century will be the problem of the color line." Not only was he right, but short years away from the century's end, one regrettably may conclude that it will also be the problem of the century yet to follow.

We meet in the aftermath of Supreme Court decisions sharply attacking affirmative action, limiting the scope of the Court's historic 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and restricting the Voting Rights Act, and in a climate in which trashing affirmative action substitutes for dialogue on race.

We meet in the dark shadow of Denny's and Texaco, of Hopwood in Texas and California's Proposition 209. There have been lynchings in Virginia and in Texas. Everywhere we see clear racial fault lines which divide American society as much now as at anytime in our past.

The picture we see is not without its brighter side. Taken over several decades rather than in snapshot moments, our portrait shows clear progress throughout this century. No more do signs read white and colored. The voters' booth and schoolhouse door now swing open for everyone, no longer closed to those whose skins are dark.

Because all of us here, God willing, will soon see what almost no American living now has ever seen - the birth of a new century and the death of an old one - we ought to remember how these earlier victories were won, and once secured, how fragile their promise has become. The removal of the legal barriers which underpinned apartheid in America consumed most of this century and consumed lives and passions too. What made that movement seem to slow down? What forces seem to have derailed the Freedom Train?

We stand now in reflection of the earlier movement's successes, many of us confused about what our next steps should be. The task ahead is enormous - equal to if not greater than the job already done.

Let me talk about how we came to this moment, about changes over time, about now and then, about what was and what may be, about where we are and where we should be going.

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